by Ben Hope
A Coromandel environmentalist Reihana Robinson has slammed New Zealand’s use of poisons such as 1080 and brodifacoum.
“To mass poison a landscape is ecological madness,” she said.
In addition, the whole “pest” management policy lacks efficiency and effectiveness and accountability.
“All the while the continual bombing of a hazardous toxin proceeds without a clear picture of what is or is not, being accomplished.”
There is a glaring lack of performance-related monitoring and surveys with a lack of clear progress toward stated goals she said.
“Failure to guard against the potentially dire consequences of poison based pest programmes reflects gross irresponsibility and recklessness,” she said.
Reihana Robinson took scientists to task for “industry bought science.”
“It absorbs countless public dollars to buttress existing policy but steers clear of any possibility of uncovering, adverse impacts, unintended outcomes or outright environmental damage of 1080”.
The indiscriminate dropping of 1080 poison has been a massive failed experiment.
Reihana Robinson said the “clean and green” marketing brand for tourism and farming was a carefully cultivated myth.
New Zealand stands alone in the world for its widespread and growing use of the supertoxin “1080”, spread by helicopter over hundreds of thousands of hectares of public conservation land, rolling hills, and even into waterways and drinking water catchments.
The toxin deals a grisly death to all oxygen-breathing species – among them countless birds, deer, mice, frogs, eels, and invertebrates of all description. In 2017 Reihana Robinson put pen to paper writing a book “The Killing Nation”. In it she recounted the ugly history of her country’s unusual and failing attempt to poison its way to a clean environment and with classic investigative reporting and research, exposed the conflicts and professional intrigue that keeps the poison flowing.
Reihana Robinson describes New Zealand’s use of the poison as “an unhealthy growth industry protected by the New Zealand government.”
Footnote: “The Killing Nation New Zealand’s State-Sponsored Addiction to Poison 1080” is available from Carson’s bookshop in Thames, Auckland University bookshop and Unity Books in Wellington. Also available via Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Nation-State-Sponsored-Addiction-Coromandels/dp/1945473444 [home]
